Posted on Wednesday, April 18 2007 @ 8:33 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Intel has more plans to move into the TV market,
The Reg reports. Of course, they aren't going to start making TVs, but they're going to provide some sort of system-on-a-chip product:
The product's called the CE2110 and it combines a 1GHz ARM processor, chipset and a basic graphics engine.
By combining the three on a single chip, Intel hopes to make it much easier for TV makers to build internet connectivity into their products. That's more than a networking issue, the company's Digital Home Group chief, Eric Kim, said, it's about equipping TVs with the power to run the software needed to reach out to internet content sources and allow viewers to interact with it.
Set-top boxes too, but while Kim praised Apple's Apple TV - which incorporates one of his company's processors - he didn't list it among the companies who have publicly committed themselves to buying CE2110s.
But, as we say, the CE2110 is an ARM-architecture part, and Intel really wants to get CE companies using x86 products. Apple certainly does because Apple TV runs a version of Mac OS X. So Kim promised an x86-based successor to the CE2110 will ship in H1 2008.
Long ago in the late 90s Intel already had a SoC based on the Pentium 3, but that chip never shipped.
